VargaVinter by Simon Rahnasto

You’re carrying your child while travelling through the snowy woods. The leaves have turned bronze and the air smells like metal.
Try to keep warm while fending off hunger and strange creatures, but most of all don’t listen to the whispers.
A top down survival game with multiple endings!
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|Name|Roles|Social Media| |---| |Belle Rahnasto| Art|Instagram|

|Name|Roles|Social Media| |---| |Simon Rahnasto|Programmer|YouTube & Twitter| |Eric Bernard|Programmer|Twitter|

|Name|Roles|Social Media| |---| |Daniel Docherty Music|Music & Voice|YouTube| |Brad Turcotte|Sound effects|Twitter & Instagram| |Nguyen|Voice|N/A|
Note
Currently only supports a resolution of 1920 x 1080
Ratings
| Overall | 13th | 4.383⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 103th | 4.033⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 601th | 3.4⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 173th | 4.133⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 74th | 4.517⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 2th | 4.7⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1th | 4.8⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 51🗨️ |
Voice acting is great, the atmosphere is amazing and the soundtrack fits so well.
Also how the hell do you achieve so much with so little graphic assets? It's basically on a monochrome background! It shouldn't look that good! :smile:
Great job once again you people!
(Question tho: how do I know if I've seen all the endings?)
Man, the atmosphere in this game is heavy! In the best way. Really felt hopeless and just barely scraping by the entire run... until I didn't scrape by anymore, that is. RIP.
I feel like in another context, you and the wolf could probably be buds, but everybody got hangry. Really liked the concept of the protector spirits for the birds and bunnies.
No real criticism, other than perhaps having the controls listed in game would be nice, but it was easy enough to just flip back to the browser to check them.
Anyway, nice work! (This is my first rate of LD50! Feeling a little loopy after the past 72 hours, but enjoyed your game all the same)
Very well done!
The gameplay is simple but becomes frantic later on and really feels like you're struggling for survival at the end.
The character designs are excellent. At first I felt like you and the wolf were both struggling with the same problem, but then when he brought the dead wolf cubs in exchange for your child it really turned him into this powerfully scary entity, like he understood something you didn't.
I want to know more about this world and why there's this winter and a huge wolf who wants YOUR baby so badly!
I liked the simple game mechanics. You knew almost right away what is what (although I first didn't realise I had to collect the trees I had fell). Meters show you stats you need and combat is simple avoid and click.
Great and unique art style through the game gives the feeling of old folklore tails or even cave paintings.
Voice acting was awesome in all it's eerieness, I loved the moment the wolf came "a child for a child?", made me feel actual disgust for it.
Professional and complete polished game overall with impressive atmosphere. Thanks for making this!
To organize a team effort like this really shows that you had a great plan. More plan!
I can see the care that you have put in all the details. The sound design and voices are simply brutal, the voice of the wolf has left me shocked. The pixelart sprites and animations are great. Controls feel super smooth and gamefeel details make the difference.
The overall result feels like a short but very elaborate game, just what you'd expect from a great jam entry.
Congratulations :smile:
~~Bugs made it unplayable at least for me and~~ the possibility to NOT skip the talk between the wolf and the latter freak were a minus. The atmosphere is great, sounds are great. This has potential. ~~Just not yet ready enough to be fun.~~ **EDIT:** I gave this another try. There must have been some odd glitch, I couldn't repeat it. The problem was I didn't get wood when chopping down the trees, but it seemed to work perfectly now. I still think it should be possible to skip dialogues you've already experienced while on consecutive runs. I find the game quite hard, but I am too impatient to take new runs because of the repeating dialogues :slight_smile:
Edit: Thank you for taking the time to retry it, happy to hear that the game behaved this time! :smiley:
- the art style is beautiful,
- the voice acting is amazing,
- the whole set up and the story are really interesting,
- the music is superb and fits the mood of the game very well,
- the gameplay is super well thought and engaging.
And I thought the wolf was scary, and then I met rabbits :) Just hats off!
I am, however, very glad that I'm not just delaying the inevitable in the end. If there was no good ending, I'd be very depressed. :sweat_smile: brilliant job as always!